Chaplin and Agee: The Untold Story of The Tramp, the Writer and the Lost Screenplay

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A book I would like to recommend to movie buffs is Chaplin and Agee: The Untold Story of The Tramp, the
Writer and the Lost Screenplay.
Jim Agee was a movie critic who wrote for
Time, Life and Nation
magazines at one time or another. He was rebellious, unkempt and eventually
descended into alcoholism, which greatly shortened his life. (He died at age
47). Yet, he was considered a genius who collaborated with John Huston on such
screenplays as The African Queen. During the "Red Scare" of the 1950s,
Agee was the only journalist to come to the defense of Charlie Chaplin, who was
accused of being a Communist sympathizer. When Time assigned Agee to write a follow
up to the bombing of Hiroshima, this greatly affected him, and he eventually
decided to write a screenplay for Chaplin titled The Tramp's New World.
It was a stream-of-consciousness work about a post-apocalyptic New York City
that never reached the silver screen. The screenplay can be found at the end of
the book. This work is not only an interesting study about a critic who
befriended a star, but also provides some insight into the McCarthy era.
-Carl

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